Liquid Gilding A Mirror

Friday, May 2, 2014

I love the look of Louis Philippe-style mirrors with their rounded top corners and gilded finish. I’d been looking for one of these mirror to go on the mantle of our living room for a long time, but nothing was the right size or price. I finally came across this mirror, which is actually meant for a dresser, but I still really liked its shape. It happened to be the perfect size and came at a very decent price tag, the only problem was I didn’t like the color. Luckily, there are so many options available for painting these kinds of things now!

At first I decided to gold leaf the mirror…but that didn’t turn out since I’m terrible at it and it would have taken me forever to finish. So I decided to try out Martha Stewart’s Liquid Gilding, which turned out great! It’s incredibly easy to use and the end results were all that I wanted.

Here’s what the mirror originally looked like. (It’s 35″ x 37.8″)

I used Martha Stewart’s Liquid Gilding in the Brass color and 2 ratty paintbrushes. Don’t use your nice brushes with this stuff, it’s really hard to wash off!

It was a nice sunny day so I brought the mirror on to the deck to paint it. I didn’t want any gilding fumes in the house..

At first I used the gilding too sparingly as you can see in the picture above. This is 1 coat.

This is also just 1 coat, but I learned it was better to use a generous amount of it. The little bottle of Liquid Gilding goes a long way, I still have over half of it after this mirror.

This is with the 2nd (and final) coat.

I let the mirror dry for around 4 hours.

And it was ready to go on the mantle! Overall, I love how the Liquid Gilding worked out. It’s not as reflective as real gold leaf, but it still has a very nice sheen. There are some blotchy parts that you can see, but I like how those look. A 3rd coat would definitely even it out if that’s what you’re going for.

Thank you! The wallpaper was already there when we purchased the house, but I remember seeing it on one of Sarah Richardson’s episodes and she sourced it from http://www.romo.com/. I can’t seem to find it there, so maybe it’s been discontinued :(.